


I’d Leave It All

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Series: MCU Prequels [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Budapest, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Harm to Children, Minor Laura Barton, Minor Nick Fury - Freeform, Pre-Canon, What Happened in Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-04 08:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14015937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton have been friends for a few years now, but Budapest is the first time that Black Widow and Hawkeye have been partnered in the field. They're both highly skilled professionals, so the mission should be pretty simple. Until they arrive and realize that they'll each need to face some unresolved issues from the past in order to get through these next few days.Bobbi Morse doesn't trust easily—not since the last few people she trusted made her regret it. Still, she knows she can't take out this kidnapping ring all on her own. Calling for backup was the right choice, but can she deal with the consequences?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stars_inthe_sky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/gifts).



> Title is from [Budapest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHrLPs3_1Fs) by George Ezra. Super on the nose, I know.
> 
> Prompt was Bobbi being involved in Budapest. And, hey! I actually followed the instructions.

“Your plane leaves in exactly one hour.” Fury doesn’t ask if they have any questions; his tone makes it clear that the meeting is over. “Go pack.” 

With that dismissal, Natasha stands up, Clint doing the same next to her. She nods at Fury, and they leave his office and walk down the busy hallway to their respective quarters to pack for the mission. 

“So what do you think?” Clint asks. 

Natasha shrugs. “Seems fairly standard. Get in, find the bad guys, take them out.” 

“That's not what I mean,” he says, shaking his head. An agent in a hurry is barreling down the hallway, so they step aside to let him pass, then move back in to continue walking in step. “It’s our first mission together, or did you not realize?” 

“Maybe if you don’t count the one where they sent you to kill me,” she responds with a smirk. 

He laughs. “Okay, our first mission on the same side.” 

“I guess it is.” And sure, she could sound more enthusiastic about it. It's just that she still remembers what it was like when he first brought her in, with the whispers and watchful eyes following her everywhere. People said he was crazy to want to give her a chance, that he was losing his mind or thinking with the wrong head, and that she was going to take the agency down from the inside—mark their words—and it would be his fault. By now, she’s proven her trustworthiness in S.H.I.E.L.D., and most people generally trust her even if they don’t get close to her, but he’s never seen her in action when it matters to judge whether his risk paid off. She would never admit it, but... she’s nervous. 

They split up at the end of the hallway, each going to their respective quarters to pack clothing. Natasha packs sparsely, throwing a couple of black outfits into a backpack with some underwear and socks, as well as her favorite shampoo—the one luxury she spares time for. When she’s done, she heads back out to the hallway and waits for Clint. It doesn’t take long until he shows up, and they head to the storage station wordlessly. At the door, they each run their identification card through the machine, and once inside, they begin to check out all the weapons and ammunition they might end up needing. 

“Budapest,” Clint says, taking his bow out of a locker. “Haven’t been there before.” 

Natasha pulls a few cases of bullets out of a cabinet and starts loading up a duffel bag. “It's nice,” she comments. “I don't know how much of the city we'll get to see, though.” She eyes the cases in her bag, then reaches back into the locker to grab a few more, just to be safe. 

“Yeah, based on what Fury said, it's not exactly a ‘bide our time’ kind of job.” Clint opens a second locker and takes three quivers full of different types of arrows. He looks over at her with her guns and regular bullets, and sighs. “I’m telling you, Nat. You need a signature weapon. You haven’t _really_ made it in S.H.I.E.L.D. until you’ve got a signature weapon.” 

“Oh, hi, Agent May!” Natasha says brightly, standing up and looking at the empty space over Clint’s shoulder. He jumps like a kid who just got caught cursing in front of a teacher. She laughs, and Clint turns around to check for himself. 

“Very funny,” he says, turning back to her. “So there's an exception that proves the rule.” 

“Exceptions can't prove a rule.” Natasha zips up her duffel. “That's a dumb saying.” 

A private plane is waiting out by the airfield, because taking an international commercial flight with your own body weight in bullets is not generally recommended, and the next nine hours are spent between memorizing maps of the city and hoarding sleep in preparation for a busy arrival. 

  
  
  


Once they arrive, they find the car in the parking lot. The glove department contains a small white envelope with written coordinates for the safe house and two keys. The drive out to Buda Hills takes about an hour, and the heating in the car is imperfect, to put it mildly. When set too low, it’s ineffective, but turned up, it’s stifling. They end up spending most of the drive with the heat all the way up and the windows cracked. It’s not environmentally friendly, but at least it’s S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dime. 

The safe house ends up being a cabin-slash-villa with a deck and a wooden fence around it, lots of open green space, and a few trees, although it doesn’t have quite enough cover to give it a forest feel. This is good, because it means there isn’t enough cover for any bad guys who manage to track them down to hide out and ambush them. The view is incredible, of course—all those shades of green, with the city in the distance. If she squints, she can almost pretend that this is a vacation. 

“I’ll check out the house,” Natasha says, opening the car door on her side. “I’ll be back in a minute to help with the bags.” 

“I’ve got them,” Clint says, waving her off, and she walks towards the house, using her thumb to slide a key out of the envelope. The path up to the house is made of unevenly laid stones, reminding her of the crumbs in Hansel and Gretel, leading the way home. 

Natasha fits the key into the lock at the same moment that the door opens from the inside. Instinctively, she goes for her gun, but it’s a friendly face at the door. Agent Morse—Bobbi, if she recalls correctly. She doesn’t know her very well; the first time they’d met, Morse had politely introduced herself and welcomed Natasha to S.H.I.E.L.D. as if she’d come up through the Academy or something, even though she had to have known the truth. Though she’s never been overly convivial, she’s also never been one of the whisperers, which puts her ahead of most of her colleagues. 

Natasha lowers her gun and fits it back into her holster. “Morse, hi.” 

“Romanoff. They sent you to help me out of this mess?” 

“Yeah, and I guess that makes you the agent who ‘found out that this went deeper than we’d thought.’ We just got the assignment today—yesterday? What day is it?” 

Morse steps outside and leans against the door jamb. “It’s Tuesday. You lost six hours with the time difference. Who’s ‘we?’” 

That’s when Clint comes around the side, a suitcase in each hand. When he sees Morse, he stops in his tracks. 

“Oh, shit,” Morse says under her breath, and Natasha flashes her a look. Now that she thinks about it, she’s never seen her and Clint in the same room. Once upon a time, she heard a rumor about the two of them being exes, but since he never mentioned it, she dismissed it as either untrue or irrelevant. But maybe she was wrong, on both counts. 

Clint waves awkwardly, suitcases still in his hands. “Hi, Bobbi.” 

Bobbi shakes her head without returning the greeting, but she opens the door all the way and steps outside. When Clint passes her to go inside, she narrows her eyes and looks away. He doesn’t react, stepping over the threshold and walking into the house. 

Once he’s gone, Bobbi turns back to Natasha, the vulnerability wiped off her face. “You guys need help carrying anything?” she asks. 

“No thanks, I’ve got it.” Natasha waves her off, but when she walks towards the garage to bring the last of the luggage inside, Bobbi walks with her. Natasha suspects that she’s avoiding being alone with Clint. 

This is interesting. As long as she’s known him, she’s considered Clint to be one of the kindest people she’s ever met. Although she’s observed that romantic relationships, with the high emotions involved and the deep entanglements into other people’s lives, make people vulnerable to hurt in a way that most human interaction doesn’t. Which is one reason she’s avoided them so far. 

They get the last of the bags out of the car and back to the house, and Bobbi leads Natasha to a living room with a couch and a few stuffed chairs around a coffee table. On the far wall, a television sits on a TV stand, and in the corner of the room, there’s a computer set up with two flat screen monitors. One of the monitors shows a simple road map of Budapest with a few marked locations, and the other is filled by a black console with a series of timestamps and a set of coordinates repeated over and over. 

Directly in front of the front door is a staircase leading up to a second floor, which has a landing with a balcony so they can talk between floors without shouting. On their right is a kitchen with a line of pots and pans hanging over the counter. 

Natasha follows Bobbi into the living room. Clint is sitting on the couch, and he stands when they come in. 

“There’s an empty bedroom upstairs where you can put down your stuff,” Bobbi tells her. “Sheets are in the closet under the stairs.” Natasha picks up her suitcase and heads for the stairs, and Bobbi turns to Clint. “You can sleep on the floor.” 

Natasha looks over her shoulder to see how he’ll react to that one, but his expression doesn’t change. She’d almost think he didn’t hear it, although she knows that his hearing aids are some of the most advanced in the world, and he would have mentioned it if they were acting up. 

“Nothing?” Bobbi looks disappointed. “Fine. The third bedroom is on this floor, in the back.” She points to the hallway underneath the staircase. 

“Thanks,” Clint says, his face a mask of affability. “I’ll go unpack.” 

Natasha finds her bedroom easily and takes a few minutes to put her clothing away in the dresser. When she’s done, she heads back out, but the whispered argument she hears coming from the living room makes her stop in her tracks. She waits just out of sight on the balcony, not wanting to interrupt. 

“I’m sorry,” Clint is saying. “Fury didn’t tell us that it was you here. If he had—” 

“Oh, you’re too good to work with me now, that’s nice.” 

“That’s not it!” Clint says. “I’m just—I didn’t want—” 

Bobbi cuts him of with an annoyed sound in the back of her throat. “Save it. I’m not happy to see you either, but it doesn’t matter. There are lives at stake—innocent lives, not that it makes a difference to you.” 

He sighs. Natasha tiptoes back to her bedroom, opens the door with a creak, and walks back to the staircase, trying to cover up her eavesdropping. 

Bobbi and Clint, standing across the room from each other, look up as she descends the staircase. Natasha nods at them as if she didn’t hear a thing and makes herself comfortable on the couch. 

“So, fill us in,” she says to Bobbi. “Fury told us that some kids have gone missing and you have a lead.” 

Bobbi nods and sits across from her in an armchair. “That’s the basic gist of it. These kids disappear from poor neighborhoods and basically are never heard from again—except that I have a source, a local reporter I’ve been seeing, who thinks that they’re connected to an increase in petty crime in different parts of the city. He’s also traced a connection between all this and some drug deals from the last few months.” 

Natasha leans forward. “What do drug deals have to do with missing kids?” 

“Well, this drug isn’t being sold on the streets,” Bobbi says. “It’s sold through a middleman and all bought up by an organization called Hegedûs Labs, for supposed animal research. The catch is that this company doesn’t actually exist.” 

“What drug are they buying?” she asks. 

“It’s called Mutant Growth Hormone, a substance that’s been discovered to be present in the bodies of superpowered people. When it’s extracted and put into a normal person’s body, it gives them powers for a limited amount of time. Not the same power as the source of the hormone—each person reacts in their own way, gets their own powers. That being said, it manifests the same way for each person each time, although the dosage will change the scale of the reaction. It’s highly addictive, which means that the longer it’s used on a person, the higher dosage they eventually need to produce the same effect. Detox is painful and needs to be done under medical supervision. My source thinks they’ve been experimenting with the hormone on the children.” 

Those poor children. “What do they want with them?” Natasha asks. 

Bobbi sighs. “Apparently, there were some covered-up police reports regarding weird break-ins and robberies at a couple of stores: cash registers that were emptied out without ever being opened, or ones that were opened but the security footage just shows it being opened and the cash being removed on its own, without a person behind it. So that’s invisibility or telekinesis, and some sort of phasing powers, and so far, that’s the extent of the damage.” 

“So far,” Natasha repeats. 

“Yeah.  But once they’re comfortable with the small-time stuff, it’ll escalate. I bet some of the kids are getting powers far more destructive. Fire, ice, radiation...I mean, it’s only a matter of time before they’re auctioned off to the highest bidder and used to pull off terror attacks.” 

She sucks in a breath. “They’re _children_ .” 

She’s not naive, of course. She knows firsthand the extent of what people who love money and power will force children to do. And it pisses her right off. 

Bobbi nods. “It’s pretty bad. The families—at least of the kids who _have_ families, some of them were runaways, living on the street on their own—have gone to the police, and they say they’re looking into it, but they’re not. It seems like some of the people involved in this ring have mob connections, and the families are poor, without resources to make their voices heard.” 

“How awful,” Clint says, speaking up for the first time. 

It doesn’t sound like a very controversial statement to Natasha, but Bobbi’s eyes narrow and she glares at him, as if she’s snapped out of business mode and has suddenly remembered that there’s bad blood between the two of them. “I know, I hate these morally ambiguous cases, too,” she says sarcastically. “Well, don’t worry, you don’t need to decide this one all on your own. S.H.I.E.L.D. says that the bad guys are the ones experimenting on the kids. Want me to get you a Sharpie? You can write it down on your arm so you don’t forget.” 

Natasha feels her eyebrows shoot up. Clint rests his chin in his hand and looks away, but doesn't say anything, and it seems to take the wind out of Bobbi’s sails. 

“Forget it.” Bobbi puts her head in her hands and shakes her head, then sits back up. “Listen, I’ve got a file upstairs with more specific intelligence. I’ll go get it; I’ll be right back.” 

 

 

There’s a pit in his stomach, and it’s getting worse. 

“Damn,” Natasha says in an undertone, looking at him in shock. “I’d heard you were exes, but what did you do, run over her puppy?” 

Clint shakes his head. “She’s not my ex.” No, it wouldn’t be accurate to call Bobbi an ex—that would imply that they’d ever gotten off the ground. 

“No? I guess Avery had it all wrong.” 

Avery’s an incurable gossip, and often has it all wrong, but in this case, there’s some truth to the rumor. Clint sighs and admits, “We went on a single date.” 

“I’m guessing it went swimmingly?” 

“Something like that.” Clint sits down next to Natasha and puts his head in his hands, wishing for the hundredth time that Fury would have warned him. If he was specially suited for this mission for some reason or other, fine, but to be blindsided like that was a kick in the pants. And if Bobbi’s going to be sniping at him for the entirety of the mission.... Not that she doesn’t have a right, he reminds himself. 

Natasha turns to him, a curious look on her face. “Why don’t you stick up for yourself when she talks to you that way?” 

It’s not something that he can explain. Since their disaster of a date, they’ve avoided each other altogether, pretending there’s no history between them. But these little digs feel cathartic in a way he can’t express. Maybe if he takes them without complaint, he’ll achieve absolution. It sounds illogical and it’s probably wrong, but he can’t bring himself to do anything differently. 

Nat’s still waiting for an answer. He tries to find the words in a way that doesn’t make her think he’s lost his mind. “If she hates me, she’s got her reasons. I don’t gain anything by pissing her off more.” 

“‘Hate’ is a pretty strong word.” She frowns in the direction of the stairs. “I can’t go into a fight not knowing whether all of the members of my team have each other’s backs.” 

“Bobbi’s not like that. She’s nothing if not loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.” 

“The highest compliment there is,” Nat says with a twist of irony. For some people, that would be true, but she knows him well enough to understand that for him, S.H.I.E.L.D. has always been a tool. It enables him to to good in the world, but he’s not loyal to the letters, or even to Fury, the way Bobbi is. 

His overseas cell phone beeps, and he pulls it out of his pocket. It’s a text message from Laura, the perfect thing to snap him out of this funk. _Landed yet? I’ll try to call today. xoxo_

He smiles despite the situation, and then he notices that Nat’s reading over his shoulder, and he swats her away. “Don’t do that! What if it was... you know, _personal_ ?” 

“Nah, Laura knows I read your texts, she wouldn’t send you a ‘personal’ text when I’m around.” 

Clint rolls his eyes and puts his phone back into his pocket. “So, listen, I’ve got something to tell you.” 

“Oh?” 

He knows he should have said something earlier, he just couldn’t figure out how to work it into the conversation, and since Laura’s name has come up... “You know how she flew in for the weekend?” 

Nat gives him a look. “Yeah, I was with the two of you at dinner Friday night.” 

“Well, after dinner, we took the scenic route home.” They’d walked around the National Mall, bundled up in their winter coats, walking so closely together that they kept bumping into each other. Laura’s cheeks and nose were pink, and her eyes lit up as she admired all of the iconic landmarks that he usually took for granted. Then he’d brought her over to the head of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where he’d conveniently noticed that his shoelace was untied. “I asked her to marry me.” 

“Oh my God!” 

“She, uh, said yes.” 

Natasha shakes her head in disbelief. “Of course she did, you dummy. I can’t believe you kept this to yourself all this time!” 

“Well, I’ve never announced an engagement before, I don’t really know how it goes. We’re going to make a joint announcement, but you’re my best friend, and—” 

“I would have killed you if I’d found out through the S.H.I.E.L.D. newsletter, yes. I can’t believe this! I’m so happy for you!” 

He knows his face is red with embarrassment, but he can’t help smiling. It feels more real, now that someone else knows. 

“I’m telling you now, you’d better name a kid after me,” she adds, elbowing him in the arm. 

“Play your cards right,” he tells her. 

 

 

She doesn’t have the strength for this. God, the last thing she needs right now is anything but a clear mind, and being around him _hurts_ . She’d tried to break the ice by teasing him about sleeping on the floor, but apparently they’re beyond jokes. And since making it clear that he didn’t want to work with her, he’s been avoiding her gaze, as if her moral turpitude is contagious. 

Each second in that room with that sanctimonious hypocrite had her blood boiling hotter and hotter until she couldn’t hold back, letting out that over-the-top jab at the end. 

The folder she’s looking for is under the false floorboard next to the dresser. By now, her fingers know exactly where to press to uncover it without needing to feel around, which frees up her brain for some good old self-castigation. 

She wasn’t fair to him with that last dig, she knows. Yes, she’s hurt, and yes, she wants to get a rise out of him, but she really shouldn’t have said it with someone else in the room. It was unprofessional to bring their personal history into a job to begin with, let alone a job that isn’t just the two of them. 

There’s an, “Oh my God!” followed by delighted laughter coming from downstairs, and she couldn’t feel more out of place if she tried. She likes Romanoff, but she can’t share friends with a man she can’t even look in the eye. 

She’s got to get a handle on herself. Pulling out the folder and shoving it under her arm, she resolves to tamp down any resentment she has towards Clint and to focus only on the job. She replaces the floorboard and steels herself before heading downstairs with the file. They look up as she walks in, and she brings the files over to the kitchen so that she can lay the file down on the island, and they can examine the papers without needing to lean over. 

“Here’s what we know.” She opens the folder to the surveillance pictures she took the other day. As Clint and Romanoff huddle around the island, Bobbi picks up a pen from the counter and twirls it around her fingers like a mini-baton. Her staves are put away in a drawer, and she misses their weight in her hands, but the pen will do in a pinch. “I spoke to some of the locals and a few of them mentioned seeing a white van driving around the neighborhood earlier in the day. _This_ white van,” she pushes a photograph towards them, “has been spotted at two separate drug deals. Plates are forged, no known owner.” Se points to the next photo in the file. “Also at the drug deals: this guy.” 

Clint picks up the photo, standing uncomfortably close to her. “He doesn’t look familiar.” 

“No. He doesn’t have a track record, but he’s definitely involved in something shady here. His name is Lambert Valentin, and he’s the ambassador from Morvania.” 

“Ooh, that’s sticky,” Romanoff says. 

“Yeah,” Bobbi agrees. “Clearly, someone’s watched _Die Hard 2_ too many times.” 

“What?” Clint cocks his head, the way he used to sometimes when he wore those cheap hearing aids, before getting the personalized set S.H.I.E.L.D. developed for him. 

“It’s like the movie, _Die Hard 2_ ,” she repeats. “You know, with the South Africans? It’s hard for the police to go after him because of diplomatic immunity, but if we blow this thing open—” 

“Morvania will either waive his immunity or extradite him and prosecute him themselves,” Clint finishes. 

Bobbi nods. “They’ll have no choice.” 

Romanoff takes the photo off Clint’s hands and gives it a single glance before setting it down on the table. “Or we could just kill him,” she says. 

She doesn’t know Romanoff well enough to tell whether or not she’s joking, so she answers as if the suggestion is serious. “Killing him will hurt the ring, but it won’t shut it down. He’s not the only bigwig involved, and that makes this even more dangerous. Most of the others involved have known ties to the mob, and they’re rough. Anyone who tries to go after them becomes a target, and not just them. Spouses and children are made to disappear, staged suicides or muggings gone wrong.... Obviously, we need to rescue the kids, but we also need to shine a light on the operation. Nothing is going to change until the story is front-page news, and nothing is going to be front-page news unless _everyone_ already knows about it.” 

Romanoff nods. “So we’ll do that. You mentioned a source?” 

“Right. He was looking into this story on his own when I met him, and then he found out about the trail of bodies of the people who’d gone digging before him. As far as he knows, I’m a civilian, so he only told me the very bare-bones story, but I reacted strongly enough that I think he’s sitting on everything he knows for now.” It wasn’t easy—Tomi’s idealistic about his career, and curious in a way that makes him a great reporter, but could also make him a dead reporter. But she’s hoping that she can distract him enough so that he won’t do anything rash before S.H.I.E.L.D. can take care of the problem. 

“Nice,” Romanoff says. “What’s your cover?” 

“I’m a Swiss novelist, getting away for a few months to work on my book.” 

“How’s your Hungarian?” 

“I speak to him—and most people—in English,” Bobbi says. “I do know a few words here and there, though. I sound ridiculous, but sometimes I come across people who don’t speak English, and it comes in handy. How about the two of you?” 

“I’m fluent enough,” Romanoff says matter-of-factly. She doesn’t elaborate, but her history is no a secret at S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone knows that she was trained from childhood in advanced espionage techniques, and foreign languages are Spy 101. 

Bobbi looks at Clint, though she knows that languages aren’t his specialty. He shakes his head. “Nope, not me.” 

“Fair enough,” Bobbi says. “You’ll be fine with English, anyway.” There, that was professional, right? Pleasant, even. Feeling proud of herself, she continues. “Back to the white van. I kind of hit the jackpot the other night. I was patrolling one of the streets where a kidnapping had taken place, and I saw that exact van, forged plates an all. And then I saw two men grabbing a kid, and _don’t_ tell me the smarter thing would have been to let it happen and follow them—I wouldn’t have been able to stand it if I let that kid get kidnapped and then lost track of the vehicle. I did manage to get a tracker on the van, and then I distracted the men and the kid ran away, but the driver almost mowed me down, and the guys got away.” 

Clint nods. “Fine. But we’re tracking the van?” 

“Yes.” That’s what she just said, but she swallows the retort. “It drove around the city to get me off their tail, and since then, it’s been parked in a park and ride lot. Hasn’t moved in three days. I even checked in person last night to be sure. I have it set up to sound an alarm on the computer when the van is moving, and to print its location to the screen every five minutes. In the meantime, I downloaded Ambassador Valentin’s personal schedule onto my laptop.” 

“Anything interesting?” Romanoff asks. 

“Funny you should ask,” Bobbi says. “Tomorrow night, he’ll be at a fundraiser for the International Children’s Safety Association. And, good news: we’ve got tickets.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, a few different characters used Mutant Growth Hormone to become superheroes and fight crime. Since mutants don't exist in the MCU, MGH either shouldn't exist or should be called something else, but I figured that "mutant" is a generic enough word that I could leave the drug name as-is.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets some answers about why her housemates can't seem to have a civil conversation.

Bobbi considers the belt.

She's got a date with Tomi in an hour, and it takes a while to get downtown, but she’s undecided about the belt. She’s wearing a buttercup-yellow shift with black tights underneath, and she thinks she needs more black to balance out the bright dress, but she’s not sure about the shape.

“Just try it on and see how it looks,” Natasha says, lounging on Bobbi’s bed as she snacks on Bobbi's personal stash of M&Ms. Bobbi may or may not be trying to win friends and influence people by bribing them with chocolate; she'll bet Clint hasn't thought of that.

“Do you think he knows anything he hasn’t told you yet?” Natasha asks.

“He doesn’t know that much, actually,” Bobbi says as she puts the belt on. “I broke into his office a few weeks ago, copied his files. That was just the basis for my own research.”

“So then why are you going out with him tonight?”

“Just for fun, I guess.” She looks in the mirror, turns the belt to the side, and decides to go with it. “Also, I’m trying to gently discourage him from looking into the matter. My theory is that if he has a girlfriend, he’s less likely to do something that will get him—or said girlfriend—killed. Which shoes, do you think?” She points with her toes to a line of shoes set against the wall.

Natasha looks between Bobbi’s dress and the shoe options. “I like the ones with the buckles,” she says. “So you’re dating this guy to protect him? That’s interesting. I’ve never gone out with a guy for a job who wasn’t total scum.”

“Hmmm. I do like him. It’s not true love or anything, but I’d be upset if he died.”

“Wow. I can count on one hand the number of people I like that much.” Bobbi looks at her sideways, and Natasha laughs. “I’m kidding, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Bobbi admits.

“And yet you trust me with your chocolate,” Natasha says.

“I am trusting you. If Clint finds out about this, you're dead to me.”

“I can keep a secret. Speaking of which, what’s the deal between the two of you?” Natasha asks.

Well, it had to happen eventually. And yet, Bobbi can't bring herself to tell the story.

“It’s not that interesting,” Bobbi says, trying for casual. “We had a falling out. Clint can tell you the details if you really want to know.” Clint will probably make it out like she’s an amoral psychopath—and maybe he's right—but at least she won't be in the room to hear it. Especially if Natasha reacts the same way that he did, and there’s another budding friendship snapped. She'd rather it happen behind her back.

“Okay. I'll ask him.” Natasha looks at her in the mirror like she's trying to read her face, so Bobbi walks over to her row of shoes and picks up the ones Natasha recommended. She sits down on the bed and puts them on. 

“How do I look?” she asks. “Completely harmless?”

“Harmless?” Natasha laughs. “Not in a million years.”

 

After Bobbi leaves, Natasha sits in her own room. Her mind starts to wander, her thoughts landing on the details of this mission. Children taken from their homes and forced to commit crimes on other people’s behalf...it echoes her own background so perfectly that she wonders if Fury chose her to go on this mission for a reason. Although she doesn’t know for sure that she was abducted. Maybe her parents gave her up willingly, or maybe they were pressured into it. She doesn’t know who her parents were—all of her childhood memories are from the Red Room.

They would give her rewards for killing: sweets when she was little, and privileges like extra minutes of hot water once she was old enough that candy started to lose its appeal. Some of the other girls who’d been brought to the program older than she’d been were harder to bribe, and the Red Room had broken them in with punishments. It wasn’t uncommon for a girl to be absent from her bed one night and then return in the morning, eyes red and welts all over her arms and back. Eventually, they caved, every last one of them, and joined the rewards system like everyone else. Happy to do whatever the job was in exchange for precious scraps of comfort.

She wonders about these children, the ones plucked from the streets of Pest. Are they being given the carrot or the stick right now?

“Hey.” Clint’s voice interrupts her thoughts. He stands in the doorway, holding up what seems to be two boxes of frozen meals. “How do you feel about dinner? We’ve got pasta with beef and mushrooms, and rice with chicken and vegetables.”

Natasha swings her legs over the side of the bed and walks over to examine the boxes. Both of them show rich, delicious food with steam rising out of them. Both of them are lies, probably. “I’ll take the beef.”

“That was my bet, too.” They go downstairs, and Clint pulls another beef out of the freezer, shelving the rice meal. “I’ll heat it up. Want to look for dishes?”

A few minutes later, they’re sitting at the table with their food, which is better than she expected. Or maybe not having had any fresh food in over twenty-four hours has lowered her standards. Either way, she's pleasantly surprised.

A few minutes into their meal, Natasha says, “So, tell me about Bobbi."

He freezes for a second. “I’d rather not.”

“Okay.” She shrugs and continues to eat.

After a few minutes of silence, Clint says, “What do you want to know?”

“She said you had a falling out.”

He laughs mirthlessly. “Yeah. That, we did.”

“What happened?”

Clint frowns. “It involves things she told me in confidence, and I don't think it's my place to—”

“She told me to ask you,” Natasha interrupts.

“What?” He puts down his fork. “Why would she do that? Wouldn’t she rather you get her side of the story?”

She shrugs. “Maybe she trusts you more than you think she does.”

“I doubt it. But okay, here goes.” He rubs his forehead and looks over at her. “We met about four, five years ago. It was a few months after I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., and we were together on a mission in Zurich. I was kind of nervous because she came out of the Academy and I was off the street, and a lot of the time, the two types don't mesh. At least in my experience.”

Natasha nods. She knows that divide all too well. The Academy brats were the worst of the whisperers when she was brought in.

“But she was great,” he continues. “She’s really fun to work with—I’m sure you’ve already noticed that—and once we beat the bad guys we realized that we just clicked, and we started being partnered up all the time. She would always give me a hard time about my codename, but not in a mean way. And then I would tease her back, trying to come up with a codename for her.” He smiles wistfully. “We never found the right one.” 

“Sounds nice.”

“Yeah, it was. It really was.” It’s like he’s off in another world. “I didn’t want to screw up what we had by dragging romance into the equation, but...the heart wants what the heart wants, you know? Anyway, after, I don’t know, a year or so? There was this S.H.I.E.L.D. holiday party and I know this is a total cliche, but she was wearing this cute white dress, and her hair was down.... I don’t know, or maybe it was the lighting. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and she kept sneaking in glances at me until we finally met up at the bar. We danced together, the sparks flew, just like in the movies, and...that was it. We couldn’t deny it anymore.”

“So then you started dating?”

“Just the one date. It went really well, at first. We had dinner at this really cozy place in the East Village that I used to love—I have no idea if it even exists anymore—and, well, the idea was to get to know each other better, which was great until she opened up about this event from her past.” He pauses. “Do I really have to tell this part?”

“Your choice,” Natasha says nonchalantly, spearing a cavatappi noodle with her fork.

“Yeah.” Clint takes a deep breath. “She was... there was a... a man. He...” His voice trails off, as if not saying the word out loud makes it less real.

Right. “Rape?” she fills in.

Clint nods. “He was a friend, from the Academy. Well, someone she thought was a friend.”

“That must have stung.” To say the least. “So, what, did you ask her what she was wearing or something shitty like that?” She’s really hoping the answer is no, because she doesn’t want to have to reconsider her friendship with him.

“No—well, the story isn’t over. She didn’t report it. Instead, a few days later, she confronted him in his apartment with a gun. He freaked out, kicked the gun out of her hands, and so she used her fists and feet instead and just...pummeled him. Once he was unconscious, she called an ambulance, fudged the details, made it out like it was self-defense. I don’t know if she went over there with the intention of killing him or just scaring him, but whatever she meant to do...he died from his wounds that night.”

Making Bobbi responsible for the death of a civilian—though Natasha’s not about to cry over a rapist—and guilty of obstruction of justice. “Wow.”

“Yeah. And, anyway, she told me this story, and I reacted...not the way she was hoping. I kept asking her questions, I guess trying to convince myself that it was an accident? I wanted her to say that she didn’t mean to hurt him that badly and that things just got out of hand. And then she got fed up and said that I was being judgmental and that she wasn’t the only one at the table who’d ever killed anyone, and then I said that it’s different when S.H.I.E.L.D. sends us after a target because the decision comes from experts instead of being based on our own personal judgments, and _then_ I said—” he swallows “—I said, ‘If we decide to kill people on our own personal vendetta, what makes us different—’”

“Oh, Clint.”

“‘—from the bad guys?’”

“You _didn’t_.”

The story really doesn’t flatter him, but he keeps going now, the words tumbling out of him like he’d gotten over the hurdle and now he’s just letting the memories take over. “I swear, I wasn’t thinking—I didn’t mean to pass judgment or to say that she was no better than the bad guys, I was just—I guess I was speaking theoretically, trying to remove it from the context and just—”

Natasha shakes her head. “ _Men_ ,” she says.

“And her eyes turned—they turned to ice, like nothing I’d ever seen before, and she went, ‘What’s the difference between me and the bad guys? Let me tell you a little something about the bad guys,’ and then she told me the whole story of how he— what he did to her, in graphic detail, from beginning to—I kept apologizing and saying I didn’t mean it how it sounded and it was like she didn’t even hear or see me, she just went on telling the story, and...I’ll never forget the tone of her voice when she talked about how...well.” He looks at her, and his eyes are haunted with memories. “When she was done talking, she got up and walked out of the restaurant and—I mentioned it was a cozy place, yeah?”

She nods.

“Well, and everyone was looking at me, that look you have on your face right now? That was exactly how they were all looking at me. Obviously, by that time, I realized what an ass I’d been, so I paid and ran after her, and being a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who no longer wanted anything to do with me, she was gone without a trace. The next time I saw her at work, she did a U-turn and headed straight for the women’s room, and...” He sighs. “We haven’t partnered up since, and... that’s the story.”

“Wow,” she says again.

“Yeah.”

“A woman opens up to you on a first date, and...”

“I know. I’m so sorry. Obviously it doesn’t help, but I am.”

“Still, it’s not exactly the average reaction. Confronting your assaulter with a weapon.” She imagines the scene, Bobbi standing over some terrified guy with a gun. “It’s certainly not _smart_.”

“See, now, _that’s_ what I should have gone with,” he deadpans.

Natasha quirks a brow. “Well, nobody expects empathy from me.”

“Oh yeah, we all know your reputation.”

“Although I wouldn’t have said it to her face.”

“You know, I really feel much better having talked to you about it,” Clint says sarcastically.

“Sorry.”

She turns her attention back to the food, wondering what the proper way is for her to react to this, as a friend. In the scheme of things, it’s just some thoughtless remarks made once upon a time. He didn’t ask for her opinion, and he seems contrite enough. There’s certainly no reason for her to get involved.

And yet.

“She must have really liked you,” Natasha says after a few minutes.

Clint looks up in surprise. “That’s what you got out of that story?”

“Well, yeah.” Having finished her food, she brings her plate over to the sink and starts to clean it. “Women deal with this invalidating crap all the time, and...well, first of all, she must have expected better of you if she told you the story in the first place, and second of all, she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly and held onto the grudge for so long if you were just some guy from work. Assholes from work are a dime a dozen, but it’s different when it’s someone you trust.”

“Well, I really liked her too, if that means anything.” He stands up and brings his plate over to the garbage, clearing it off.

“Did you try to apologize again later?” she asks.

“She didn’t want anything to do with me, so I figured I would just leave her alone. But now...you know, I don’t want to hurt her by my presence. I should leave, call in someone else.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, but all she says is, “We don’t have time for that.” She dries her clean dishes and puts them away, and Clint takes her place at the sink. “I’m going to go take a look at the screens, see if there’s anything new. Let’s watch TV afterwards. It’ll take your mind off what a dumbass you are.”

“Feel so much better,” he repeats, shaking his head.

She laughs.

 

 

After the movie, Clint changes for bed and waits for Laura to call. He doesn’t mean to doze off, but he didn’t sleep much on the plane, and the next thing he knows, his the sound of ringtone is jostling him awake. He pulls the phone out from underneath his pillow and presses the green button underneath Laura’s name to answer. “Hey, you.”

He misses her. Aside from a five-minute update on the way to the plane yesterday, they haven’t had time to speak since the weekend, each of them busy with their own projects. Laura’s finishing up a master’s in plant science at Cal Poly Pomona, which means that she has even less free time than he does.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s late there. I meant to call earlier, but there were some complications with one of my orange grove projects. Kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

“It’s okay, it’s nice to hear your voice.”

She starts telling him about the orange grove. One of her project partners had used the regular fertilizer instead of the experimental fertilizer, and then they couldn’t find the experimental fertilizer, and they were worried that the entire project would be delayed by months, and Clint’s trying to listen, but his mind starts to drift.

 _She must have really liked you_ , Nat said.

He has no doubts that he’s marrying the right woman for him; that’s not the issue. He loves Laura—loves her intelligence, her curiosity, her enthusiasm.... He can’t imagine a woman who’s a better fit for him. But he’s never considered whether he’s the best fit for _her_.

 _Women deal with this invalidating crap all the time_.

He wonders what Laura would think, if he told her this story. What if it had been her on that date—would she have forgiven him? He’s about to get married and start a family, but is he the sort of man who _should_ be getting married and starting a family? What kind of values does he want to transmit to the next generation?

“Anyway, finally he remembered that he left it in the cafeteria, of all places, and thank God, it was still there when we went back for it.”

She doesn’t ask about his mission. It took her a while to accept that he’s not allowed to tell her anything during a case and only a few screened details when they end, but she’s used to it by now. And he likes to hear her talk about school. It reminds him that there’s a world out there beyond the S.H.I.E.L.D. bubble, that their life-and-death adventures actually _mean_ something, because the world that they’re protecting includes the people they love.

“The projects are fun, though, as much as they stress me out,” she says. “It’s the exams that really get me. And I have two coming up this week. So that’ll be fun. I’m going to be living off Red Bull and Snickers for the foreseeable future.” Laura’s great at hands-on, but she tends to panic and go into cram mode when it’s finals season. Not that he has room to criticize, as someone who never even graduated from high school.

“Good thing I’m not around to distract you.”

“Oh yeah, I won’t be thinking about you at all.” Her voice is thick with amused sarcasm. “Out there thousands of miles away, getting into who knows what kinds of trouble...”

“Let’s make a deal,” he says. “I’ll worry about kicking bad guy ass, and you worry about kicking professor ass.”

Laura chuckles affectionately. “You do realize that my speciality has a lot less inherent violence than yours does, right? Most of us aren’t out beating each other to death all day.”

She’s never even seen him punch someone, he realizes. For her, the fact that he regularly beats people half to death is theoretical, and she’s certainly never been in danger because of him. He remembers what Bobbi said about spouses and children being targeted by the mafia running this operation, and he has to focus on her voice to stop horrific images from flooding his mind.

“Sorry,” he says, wincing. “Bad analogy.”

“No, I appreciate the support. You’ve got a deal.” She pauses. “Hey, it’s probably really late in Budapest. Nine hour difference, right? Wow, you must be exhausted.”

That’s one word for it.

“I should let you go to sleep,” she continues. “I’m sure you’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

He swallows. “Hey, Laur?”

“Yeah?”

“What if I don’t make it out of here? Or the next mission? What if we make all these plans for our future, the farm, and...” He doesn’t voice the full extent of his fears. It’s not just himself that he’s worried for, but for her and these theoretical children, but he doesn’t quite know how to articulate that idea.

“It’s scary,” she says. “Every time we hang up the phone, I don’t know if it’s the last time I’ll ever speak to you.”

“Then why bother?”

“You mean, why not break up with you and find some other guy with a safe, normal job, who might go out one day to get milk and be hit by a car while crossing the street?”

Clint laughs, imagining the sly look on her face. “I love you. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

They hang up and he closes his eyes, but this time, sleep eludes him. His thoughts nag at him, reminding him that Laura doesn’t know the whole story, that telling her half-truths and convincing himself she’s fine with the whole story is just as bad as lying outright.

In his entire godforsaken life, the two best things that have happened to him were Fury offering him a job and Laura offering him her number. But maybe it’s impossible—maybe he’s being greedy, trying to have both. He’s getting the best of both worlds, while only offering each side half of himself in return, and if he keeps trying to balance the two, he might end up toppling everything.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy shenanigans.

Upstairs, the third bedroom has been converted to a makeshift gym, with a punching bag hanging from the ceiling, a dip stand, and a large mat set up for sparring. Right now, Bobbi’s working out her stress on the punching bag, punishing it for the crimes of anyone who’s ever hurt someone weaker than them.

She straightens the bag and takes a step back. “I’m not weak; you’re weak,” she says, and then she lets her fists fly, beating a tattoo into its red leather surface.

She’s a sweaty mess by the time Natasha walks in, dressed in a workout tank and leggings. Bobbi pauses to glance up at her; Natasha stops at the threshold and takes a look at Bobbi, as if she’s waiting for permission to enter.

Bobbi catches the punching bag with a grunt and then nods. She can tell from the look on Natasha’s face that Clint told her the story. It’s a combination of pity and determination, leading her to deduce that it’s not a coincidence that Natasha came to work out while Bobbi happened to be in the middle of her own training.

She starts to punch the bag again. “Please tell me you’re not here on his behalf or something like that.”

“No,” Natasha says. “He told me what happened. I get why you got mad.”

It’s nice to hear, but Bobbi’s skeptical. It makes sense that Natasha wouldn’t judge her for the original story, given her own background, but she’s also Clint’s best friend—there’s no way she’s going to take the side of a virtual stranger over the person she owes her life.

Natasha nods towards the mat. “Actually, I was wondering if you wanted a sparring partner. My joints are still stiff after all that flying.”

Still uncertain as to what Natasha’s endgame is, Bobbi looks between the punching bag and the mat. Either way, she hasn’t had a sparring partner in weeks, leaving aside the abbreviated scuffle with the kidnappers the other night. Could be good for her.

“Okay,” Bobbi says. She steps away from the punching bag and starts to unwind her hand wraps. When she’s done, she drops them onto the bench behind her and she stretches her fingers against the wall. Meanwhile, Natasha warms up, and a few minutes later, they meet on the mat.

They circle each other, sizing each other up. Bobbi strikes first, hoping to catch Natasha by surprise, hoping to impress her, but Natasha ducks the punch easily and comes up behind Bobbi, going for her underarms. Bobbi dodges and spins around with a kick, but Natasha neatly steps out of the way, and Bobbi has to adjust her balance quickly.

 _Deep breath._ It’s just sparring. She doesn’t want to hurt Natasha, no matter what the adrenaline in her system is telling her. It’s just for fun.

She ducks under a kick and throws a punch in response, breathing much harder than she should be for the effort she’s putting in.

“You okay?” Natasha asks.

Bobbi grunts and nods, throwing a jab that forces Natasha to take a step back. She uses the opening to throw her weight behind a second punch, but she meets only air. Natasha’s fast and smart, and Bobbi has to move quickly to avoid her rebound kick.

She tastes blood in the corner of her mouth, having accidentally bitten her lip too hard while concentrating, and the metallic tang sends her into a frenzy. Bobbi starts to go faster, letting her instinct take over, pouring out her repressed anger into moves and routines that she’s executed thousands of times.

It’s no use, though. Natasha’s fighting smarter, sidestepping and evading her blows, playing defense until she spots a weakness, and the next thing she knows, Natasha has managed to cleanly sweep her legs out from underneath her, and Bobbi lands flat on the ground.

Staring at the ceiling, she starts to laugh. She can’t even explain why, it’s just—she’s pretty sure she just made a fool out of herself, lashing out like an amateur in what was supposed to be a friendly sparring match.

Bobbi covers her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. That was awful.”

“Distracted, huh?” Natasha says. She extends her arm to help Bobbi sit up.

Bobbi takes the help and sits with her feet flat on the floor, arms resting on her knees. “Something like that.”

“Because of Clint?” Natasha asks. “Because he said a bunch of stupid things five years ago?”

“Because he _still_ thinks he’s better than me,” Bobbi clarifies. “Over something he will never understand, or I hope he’ll never—I don’t know, is a little empathy too much to ask for?”

Natasha laughs and sits down next to her. “Clint doesn’t think he’s better than anyone. I thought you two knew each other well.”

“We used to.”

“Well, I don’t know how he used to be, but the guy I know is all about empathy.” Natasha pauses. “I’m sure you know my story. He was sent after me, and I managed to get a shot in, but he was able to subdue me. His orders were to kill me, and he had the opportunity. And I’d shot him! Instead, he brought me to S.H.I.E.L.D. and convinced them that I was the victim.”

“You _were_ the victim.”

“Maybe, but he didn’t know that. He knew I had blood on my hands, that I’d killed people whose only crimes were that they were inconvenient for my bosses. And he looked Fury in the eye and said, ‘Sir, I know there’s good in her.’”

“If you’re going to tell me that I should have looked past Slade’s actions to find the spark of humanity in him, we’re going to have a real problem here.”

Natasha shakes her head. “No, that guy made his own choices; he got what was coming to him.”

“Are those Clint’s words?” Bobbi asks, skeptically.

“They’re mine.”

“Well. I appreciate it.” It means something, it really does, but it doesn’t absolve Clint of anything. “I don’t know what _he_ wants from me, but I’m never going to apologize for what I did. If he wants to judge me, let him. It’s no concern of mine.”

“He doesn’t want you to apologize,” Natasha says. “He knows he was wrong.”

“Yeah, right.”

Natasha sighs and changes the subject. “Can you work with him?”

“What?”

“Do you want him to leave? He would, if you asked. He doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

 _He doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable._ All this time, she was thinking that _he_ was the uncomfortable one, that he didn’t want to work with her because she didn’t live up to her standards. Is it possible she read the situation entirely backwards?

It’s too much to process right now. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, trying to shake off her thoughts. “I’ve got no problem working with him.”

“Why haven’t you worked together since your ‘falling out?’”

“Hell if I know. I guess Fury noticed the vibes and thought it was too much trouble. It’s not like there’s a lack of other agents for either of us to team up with.”

“And now? What’s changed?”

Bobbi shrugs. “Ask Fury.”

Natasha doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she goes over to the bench where she deposited her towel and water bottle, picking them up and taking a drink.

Bobbi hesitates, then says, “Natasha?”

It’s the first time she’s called her by her first name out loud.

Natasha swallows and looks at her from over her water bottle. “Yeah.”

“How did Clint know there was good in you?”

Natasha shakes her head. “You know, I’ve been asking that question since the day I joined S.H.I.E.L.D.” She tosses the water bottle back onto the bench and wipes her mouth and face with the towel, then turns back to Bobbi. “Come on. Let’s go again.”

 

Someone bumps into her from the side, and Natasha’s pewter-colored clutch falls to the floor. She arranges her features to appear startled and looks up.

“ _Elnézést_ ,” Lambert Valentin says in a Morvanian accent.

Bad guys never look the part. This one has got tousled brown hair with gray streaks and an earnest expression laid in a square face. He looks genuinely apologetic about having inconvenienced her. Natasha reassures him that there’s no harm done and allows him to retrieve her fallen clutch and to kiss her hand. She ignores the bile rising in her throat from having his child-abuse-funding hands on hers, smiles prettily, and heads towards the nearest restroom.

The fundraiser is in a hotel lobby, packed to the brim with potential benefactors. The three of them are attending in disguise, and the computer at the apartment is set up to send alerts to all three of their phones if the van moves, in which case one of them will stay here, and the other two will take the motorcycle parked down the block and follow the van.

She pushes open the bathroom door. Inside, a woman with dark hair twisted into a chignon is standing by the sink, touching up her lipstick. Natasha walks over to the adjacent sink and turns on the water.

“It’s clear,” says the brunette. “I checked all the stalls and the supply closet. The ticket number is 105, by the way.”

“Great.” Natasha slips her hand into the hidden pocket sewn into her dress and pulls out the cell phone she’d nicked from Valentin a minute ago. “Step One is accomplished.”

Bobbi grins. “I love that our ball gowns have pockets,” she says. “I’m definitely keeping mine.”

“Just write down on the expense report that it got torn during a chase,” Natasha advises. “That’s what I always do.”

Bobbi grins. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Natasha goes into a stall and gets to work. Her other pocket has a cable with a specialized thumb drive, which she plugs into the phone before rebooting it. The phone detects the drive as it turns on, booting in download mode, and Natasha starts the process of copying over all its data to the disk.

About halfway through, she hears the door open, and footsteps clack across the tile floor. Someone enters the stall next to her. It’s a minor complication.

She lets the download finish, pulls the plug out of the phone, and turns the phone off.

“Anna, can you help me with my clasp?” Natasha says in Hungarian, for the benefit of the person in the stall one over. “I can’t quite reach.”

“Of course,” Bobbi responds.

Natasha unlocks the stall for her, and they squeeze in together. Silently, Natasha passes her the thumb drive, which Bobbi pockets.

“Thanks so much,” Natasha says, punctuating with a giggle, to really sell it. “You’re a lifesaver.”

The toilet in the next stall flushes.

Natasha waits a few minutes until both her neighbor and Bobbi have left the bathroom. She leaves the room and looks for Clint in the main hall. Bobbi should be long gone by now, having taken the disk back to the safe house so that she can pass the data to S.H.I.E.L.D. tech support in Washington. Their job will be finding listings for all of the incoming and outgoing calls for the last two months and to set up location tracking on any number with at least ten calls during that time.

She makes eye contact with Clint, who’s waiting at the bar. At her nod, he gets up and heads towards the coat check in order to create a diversion. She holds back for a few minutes, to give him time to work, and when she approaches, she can see that Clint is yelling at the attendant in English, something about how the coat that was fetched for him is definitely not his, and yes this was the ticket they gave him, and no that’s not his coat.

“Do you think I’m so stupid I don’t recognize my own coat?” he demands, throwing his finger in the poor attendant’s face.

Clint throws the coat onto the floor and stomps on it, and the attendant practically leaps over the counter to stop him, which provides Natasha the perfect opportunity to slip into the closet, unnoticed. From there, It’s a matter of seconds to find the rack with hanger 105 and to put the phone into its owner’s coat pocket.

 

When Clint returns with Natasha from the fundraiser, Bobbi is working at the computer, processing the data from the thumb drive. She’s still at it an hour later when he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up the next morning and ventures out of his room in search of coffee, he’s not surprised to see her in exactly the same spot.

“Please tell me you got some sleep,” he says as he passes by on his way to the kitchen.

“Ask me no questions,” she calls behind him. If she says anything else after that, he can’t hear her over the whirring of the coffee maker.

He returns a few minutes later with two cups, one of which he hands over. Milk, no sugar—they may not have spoken in years, but it takes a lot more than that for him to forget how someone likes their coffee.

“Thanks.” Bobbi takes the mug from him with two hands and leaning in to take a deep whiff. She puts the coffee down on the desk to wait for it to cool, and then says, “I’m almost done. HQ sent me the lookup information overnight, and I’m just filtering out the obvious ones, government offices and so on. Places where no one could possibly hide kidnapped children.”

 _Great work_ , he wants to say, but he’s afraid she’ll think he’s being condescending. He tries to keep it neutral: “And once you’ve got the list, we can take the car and check these places out?”

Bobbi nods. “Yep. Hopefully, it’ll be ready by the time Natasha wakes—” there’s a creaking sound from upstairs, a door being opened, and Bobbi lets out a resigned laugh. “Never mind, then.”

She turns back to the computer, and he understands that he’s been dismissed.

True to her word, Bobbi’s got a list printed out in triplicate by the time he and Natasha have finished eating breakfast. It’s five pages long, containing every location where a phone call has been made or received from every number that’s had at least ten interactions with Valentin over the past two months, except for the ones she was able to cross off the list. It’ll take days to physically check out all of these locations, but maybe they’ll get lucky.

Natasha flips through the pages of her copy. “This is sorted?” she asks.

“In order of calls,” Bobbi says.

Clint nods. “So, let’s get going.”

They spend the rest of the day driving out to various locations and checking buildings for suspicious activity, but everything they look at is a dead end: apartments, private homes, an accountant’s office, and a barbershop that’s actually _just_ a barbershop and not a front for a secret headquarters of any kind.

It’s getting dark by the time they reach location number 13, which is just over an hour away, on Lake Balaton. It’s private property owned by Valentin, a gated estate in a remote area.

Bobbi slows down as they pass the front gate, and all of them look out the window at the grounds. “Where do I park without being conspicuous?” she mutters.

“Just keep driving,” Natasha says, unfastening her seatbelt and shifting over to the rear left door. “I’ll check it out and find you later.”

Before Clint can ask if she’s seriously about do what he thinks she’s about to do, the door is opened, and Natasha is out of the car, somehow managing to kick the door closed behind her during the jump. She rolls over a few times in the grass field next to the road, then gets up onto her haunches and waves at them.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Show-off.”

Bobbi laughs. “She was a great find.”

“Yeah, I’m still waiting for that referral bonus Fury promised me,” he says.

There’s a turn for a beach three-quarters of a mile down, and Bobbi parks the car by the side of the road, at the junction. The road is surrounded by tall grass fields on all sides, with a light smattering of trees. The car isn’t hidden by any means, but anyone who comes across it will assume that it belongs to people sneaking off to the water for a night swim.

“We’d better go meet her,” Clint says, and Bobbi turns the ignition off. “She’s just doing recon, but it can’t hurt to have people watching her back.”

They stick to the grass, keeping far from the road to avoid being seen by passing headlights. By now, twilight is over, and night has fallen. The sky looks like a tapestry, thousands of stars twinkling across the black velvet canopy of night. He recognizes Cassiopeia first, with its distinctive W-shape, and it comforts him to see that it’s at due north, the same place in the sky as back home, and over in California, where Laura is doubtless stressing out over finals right this very moment.

To make conversation, and because it's been on his mind, Clint says, “So, these guys are really dangerous, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. If they catch us before we catch them, we're toast.” Bobbi sticks her hands in her pockets and continues. “A reporter was looking into this stuff a few months ago, and he died of an ‘overdose,’ though the doctor who did the autopsy never told the police about the burn marks and the missing toenails. All of the notes he’d taken on the matter disappeared, of course. And there was that private investigator whose preschool-aged son ended up floating in the Danube.”

Clint feels his stomach in his throat, remembering the prospective children he and Laura have been discussing having. What kind of life can he offer them, any of them?

“You all right?” Bobbi asks. “You’re looking kind of pale.”

“Excuse me for getting unsettled by torture and dismemberment.”

“Hey, you asked.” But she shrugs and falls silent.

Once upon a time, in a dimly lit bistro on East Fifth Street, this woman took her darkest secret and placed it in his hands. He didn't see it at the time, that what she was doing was opening herself up, showing him the part of herself she was most scared to let people see, and asking him to accept her. It's too late to go back to the way things were, and he doesn't want to, not exactly, but he wishes he could fix it. And he realizes that he's never done for her what she did for him. He's never spoken about his fears, never made himself vulnerable in front of her.

If he does, there's nothing to stop her from throwing it back in his face the way he did. But then again, if he had a guarantee... it wouldn't mean as much. 

Clint takes a deep breath. “I’m engaged,” he says.

“In what?” Bobbi asks, distracted.

“No, _engaged_.”

She looks up. “Oh! No kidding?”

“Yeah, and we’ve been talking about building a family. That’s why—”

“Why my talk about the way they targeted families is messing you up so bad. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“No, I can’t be blind to the risks.”

She glances over at him, her expression thoughtful. “No, you can’t.” They continue walking in silence for a little while longer, with only the sounds of some nocturnal birds he can’t identify in the background. He feels lighter, having gotten that out. He’s about to change the subject when she looks at him again and says, “My family back home was told that I died in a training accident in my academy days.”

“Wow.” He doesn’t have much in the way of family—his parents died in a car crash when he was a kid, and he and his brother went their separate ways years ago—but that... that’s intense. To have a family who cares about you, and to have to hide from them like that...

“It was really rough. I almost backed out of it five times. But it keeps them safe.” She breaks off their eye contact and looks ahead at the empty road, crossing her arms. “Fury helped me set it up. You should talk to him.”

“You think so? I’ve never spoken to him about my personal life before. Not since he brought me in, anyway, and that was...a long time ago.”

“He cares about his people, even if he doesn’t always show it. It’s hard to rely on people in this game. I trust exactly one man.”

Clint nods solemnly. “Of course. Albus Dumbledore.”

She laughs.

He used to make her laugh all the time. It was so easy working together back in the day, when they were just two new recruits in a harsh business looking for a connection with a fellow human being. Or maybe that’s how he thinks of it now because it’s easier, because that way he doesn’t need to wonder what if. How would his life be different today, if he’d been just a little bit more sensitive during a single conversation all those years ago?

He doesn’t regret the way his life turned out. If he can figure out how to balance a life with Laura and the farm with his work at S.H.I.E.L.D., it’ll be so much more than sixteen-year-old Clint, orphaned and homeless, would ever have dared to hope for. But maybe... maybe there’s a parallel universe where things are different between him and Bobbi, and maybe the Clint of that universe is happy, too. Maybe there isn’t just one right way, but an infinite number of paths that everyone’s life can take, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with more than one way to win.

He sneaks a glance at her. “Hey. Um. For what it’s worth...I’m sorry.”

Bobbi looks up. “Yeah?”

He’s about to elaborate, but then he spots a figure in the distance. Based on its size and the familiar walk, he’s pretty sure it’s Natasha, but he keeps a hand on his bow just in case until they’re close enough to be sure.

Not wanting to disturb the night’s calm, none of them say anything until she’s right in front of them, and once they all meet up, Natasha shakes her head. “It’s not the right place,” she says. “No one’s there, it’s just a vacation home. Closed down right now.”

“You were inside?” Bobbi asks.

“Of course. But listen, there’s someone else with eyes on the house.”

Clint can feel his eyes widen. “What? Who?”

“Some guy over in a tree, with binoculars. Not very well-hidden. Dark hair, clean-shaven, thin, brown leather jacket, glasses with half-frames—”

Bobbi interrupts. “Tomi. He’s really got some kind of death wish, doesn’t he?”

“Your reporter?” Clint asks.

“My reporter,” she says with a sigh.

“I could shoot at him, scare him off,” Natasha offers. “Just one or two shots into the tree trunk should be enough.”

“Absolutely not,” Bobbi says.

“I know what I’m doing, Morse; I’m not going to hit him.”

“I don’t care. He’s a civilian. No guns.”

“It could just make him more determined,” Clint points out. “He’s gotta be pretty stubborn to find this place and stake it out for however long he’s been here.”

“Fine.” Natasha pushes her hair behind her ear and crosses her arms. “Anyone have a better idea?”

“I do, actually.” Clint reaches into his pocket and pulls out his CIA badge. All three of them have them—issued fresh, with new names, for each mission—and he doesn’t know what happens behind the scenes to make this legal, if it even is legal, but they occasionally prove to be useful. “I’ll talk to him.” Alone, because it’s too early to blow Bobbi’s cover, and better that this guy isn’t able to identify more faces than he needs to.

Bobbi nods, and they both look at Natasha, who rolls her eyes and says, “Fine.”

He finds Tomi in a tree directly across from the estate grounds, his leg hanging down over the branch he's seated on, easily spotted to anyone looking. If this had been the right location, this guy would be dead meat.

Clint sneaks around the back, preparing himself for the conversation he's about to have. He moves quietly, hiding himself in the shadows until he's ready to speak. 

“Tomi Biro?” he says, making sure that his voice will catch the other man's attention without carrying too far. 

Startled, Tomi drops the binoculars to his chest and looks down at Clint. He raises a leg to the tree branch, preparing to jump off, and asks something in Hungarian. Probably something along the lines of _Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing here_ —but Clint’s Hungarian is non-existent, so it could just as easily be _Any chance you know what time it is?_

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Clint says. “Your life is in danger. I can give you more details, but only if you promise to keep it a secret.”

“I already know my life is in danger,” Tomi responds in English. “But I will not let this—” he points towards the house across the street, “—go on unexposed.”

“Oh, it’ll be exposed,” Clint says. “I’m on your side, trust me.”

Tomi pushes off the tree branch and lands in front of Clint. He looks at Clint warily and presses his lips together. Clint looks back at him, keeping his gaze steady.

“Okay,” Tomi says, finally. “Off the record. Who are you?”

Clint takes the CIA badge out of his pocket and passes it over. “Agent Cal Bleeker. US Central Intelligence Agency. We’ve been following the same case you have, and we’re finally closing in on this thing.”

Tomi narrows his eyes. “You are being very vague. This sounds like fishing for information.”

“Child kidnapping ring. Illegal and unethical scientific experiments to give them supernatural powers. Sound familiar?”

“Yes, it does,” Tomi says. “And how does the American government— _why_ is the American government handling this?” Tomi asks.

Clint crosses his arms. “That’s the kind of question a reporter might ask _on_ the record, Mr. Biro.”

Tomi holds up his arms with his palms out, his body language indicating that he’s not a threat. “I am just curious.”

Clint nods. “It’s easier for your government to outsiders handle this investigation, for reasons you may guess.”

Tomi nods. “They do not want to find a dead horse in their bed.”

“ _Godfather_ reference.” Clint snaps his fingers. “I like that.”

“How did you find me?” Tomi asks.

“You're not very hard to track,” Clint says. It’s not an answer, but Tomi wouldn’t expect a direct answer from an intelligence agency. “If we could find you, then so could the people you've been following. I recommend that you go home and stay safe until further notice, Mr. Biro.”

Once he extracts Tomi’s promise to behave and watches him drive away on a motorcycle, Clint meets up with his partners and gives them an update. “All good,” he reports. “He agreed to lay off, and I agreed that he'd get his scoop eventually.”

Bobbi looks relieved. She lifts her hand, as if she’s about to reach out...but then she squeezes it into a fist and brings it to her mouth. “Thanks, Clint.”

All of a sudden, he’s hit with a rush of affection towards her, reminding him that underneath everything that went down between them, they were friends first, and they can still be friends. “Yeah, of course,” he says softly.

“Right,” Nat says. “It’s getting late. I vote that we go back to the safe house, get some sleep, and continue in the morning. All in favor, say aye.”

“Aye,” Clint and Bobbi say at the same time.

And that’s what would happen, if not for the fact that ten minutes away from home, all three of their phones start to chime and buzz.

Natasha gets to her phone first.

“The van is on the move.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes finally get to use their fists for real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of violence in this chapter, including some to children, so be warned.

Bobbi pulls into the driveway quickly, and the three of them rush into the house to get an update on the van. With the press of a button, the computer wakes up from sleep mode, and the screens come to life. Bobbi sits down, and Natasha and Clint pull up chairs behind her, and they look at all the screens to try to get a full picture. The top monitor has a map of the city, along with a blinking pointer that’s supposed to represent the van. 

“It’s heading southwest,” Clint says.

Natasha traces the line of its route with her pointer finger, then continues in the same direction until her finger reaches the northern tip of Csepel Island. “Towards the port,” she says.

She's starting to feel adrenaline kicking in, her body gearing up for the final showdown, but they're not quite there yet. “Let’s pull up some phone calls,” Bobbi mutters to herself. She opens up the program for tracking calls and presses the ‘Start scan’ button. “If we can figure out where they’ll be headed once they pick up whatever goods they’re going for...”

“You think it’ll just lead us there?” Natasha says.

“Well, they can’t know about the tracker, or they would have gotten rid of it,” Clint says.

“Either that, or it’s a trap.”

They continue talking over her head, but meanwhile, the scan is finished running, and Bobbi clicks the results open.

“It’s our lucky day,” she says. “We’ve got two guys on the phone with each other. One of them is moving—” she glances between the van’s location and the location of the cell phone, “—ha! We’ve got someone from the list, _in the van_ , on the phone with someone else on the list.” She reads off the address where the second person’s signal was triangulated. “Is that on our list of places to check out?”

Clint pulls out his copy of the list and starts leafing through it. Natasha checks over his shoulder, sliding her finger down the page. They go through two pages that way, and when Clint flips to page three, Natasha points.

“Got it.” Clint reads off the address, which matches the one Bobbi just said. He looks up. “No details, though.”

“Let’s cross-reference.” Bobbi pulls up a satellite search application and types in the address. A few seconds later, it starts to load, and once the picture is clear, they can make out an isolated business park with an empty parking lot. “That... looks promising.”

They start packing their weapons and loading up the car. Bobbi gets her staves from the hidden compartment in the coffee table and takes them outside to test the spring traps against the outer walls of the house. She practices the release from a few different angles, and once she’s satisfied, they get packed in the car, and she goes back inside to get her Glock. Clint is sorting through his arrows on the living room floor, and Natasha’s standing over the kitchen island, an M249 SAW laid over to the side, as if an afterthought, as she loads rounds into a pair of pistols.

“What, just guns?” Bobbi says.

Natasha looks up. “What’s wrong with guns?”

“Nothing, they’re just a little...generic.”

Natasha shakes her head and sighs. “The two of you...”

Clint laughs.

It’s past midnight by the time they finish packing up, and after the tracker confirms that the van is indeed headed towards the address they traced, they pile into the car and get moving. Clint drives this time, and they sit in anticipatory silence during the ride. Once they get close enough, he slows down to a crawl and kills the headlights. Just outside the entrance to the park, they find a spot to park next to a tree with enough overgrown leafy branches to camouflage the car in the dark.

They put in their comm earpieces as they exit the car and sneak through the trees, hiding themselves in the shadow of an adjacent building. There are lights and voices coming from the area as the drop-off is completed, and they watch the exchange from between the trees.

“Hey, Bobbi,” Clint says quietly, as they wait.

She turns her head towards him. “Yeah?”

He looks at her, his expression grave, blue eyes boring into hers. “In case we die today...you should know.”

“Know what?”

The corner of his mouth quirks upwards as he says, “It was _Lethal Weapon_.”

“What lethal weapon?” Natasha asks, looking between the guns in her holsters and the two of them.

“The movie,” he says, and suddenly Bobbi realizes what he’s talking about. “ _Die Hard 2_ is the one with the airplane, where the bad guys hack the control tower and make the plane think that the ground is lower than it is—”

“Right, right, right. I knew it was _something_ 2, I just mixed up my white action dudes.”

“Oh, is this another American pop culture reference?” Natasha asks.

Bobbi goggles at her. “How are you a spy if you don't get American pop culture references?”

Natasha widens her eyes and affects a simpering voice. “ _Lethal Weapon_? That's the one with, um...” She tucks her hair behind her ears and bites her lower lip, then shakes her head. “Oh, I can never remember his name. Your favorite movie of all-time? You don't say. I haven't seen it in years!”

“What?” Bobbi widens her eyes and jerks her thumb in Natasha’s direction. “No fair, how come she gets to honeypot? Fury never lets me honeypot!”

Clint snorts. “The last time Fury let you honeypot, you set a concert hall on fire.”

“Pffft, they were insured.”

“Anyway,” Natasha adds, “you’re dating a guy to keep him from getting killed. That’s almost the same thing.”

“Well, I’m not doing a very good job of it, based on what we saw earlier tonight.”

Natasha smirks. “Well. Maybe if you watched more movies.”

Bobbi points at her. “When this is all over, I’m sitting you down, and you and I are going to marathon the classics.”

Finally, the van drives off, and once it’s gone, the three agents move closer. The building is mostly dark, with a few lit rooms on the top floor. A “For Rent” sign is hung from one of the windows, although most of the sign is torn off, and the phone number is unreadable, if it was ever legitimate in the first place . Natasha goes off to scout, and she reports through the comm that there are ten guards on the ground: four by the front door, and two on each side of the building.

“I’ll check the roof,” Clint says. He jumps up onto a ledge on the building they’re hiding behind, then starts making his way up the side. Bobbi waits, keeping an eye on the guards she can see, making sure they’re still unaware of their presence.

Clint’s voice comes through the comm. “Five up top.”

“All right,” Bobbi says. “Here’s the plan.”

\--

“Three, two, one!” Clint calls, and Bobbi takes a running leap between rooftops as he and Natasha start pouring ammunition into the guards on the ground. As expected, the rooftop guards run out to the side of the building where they can see Natasha's location, and they don't see Bobbi come up from the side. She discharges her staves into her hands as she runs and throws them simultaneously, knocking out two guards in one shot. Ducking a punch from Guard #3, she sweeps the floor for her staves and stays down, waiting for her cue.

An arrow whizzes by and hits its mark, taking down Guard #3. At the same time, she flips a stave in the face of Guard #4, breaking his nose. She drops him with a well-placed kick, but before she can think about her next move, she’s knocked into the wall by Guard #5, who’s much larger than her.

He gets his hands on her neck and starts to squeeze. She tries to fight him off, but he’s pressing her into the wall, and she can’t get any kind of traction to make a move. His fingers dig into her throat—she’ll have bruises if she’s lucky enough to get out of this—and the panic starts to rise inside of her. Trying to pull his hands off directly won’t work, but there must be a way out, if only she could _think_...

He says something threatening in Hungarian, and she’s glad she doesn’t understand him, but this is... this is not how she wants to go out. Black spots dance in her vision, and she knows she only has seconds left.

Making a final, desperate attempt, she reaches out with her foot, and feels one of her staves. She pulls it in, then gets her foot underneath and kicks it into the air. Her hands close around its shaft, and she presses the button and shoves it underneath this guy’s vest. The electricity makes him stagger backwards, and she kicks him with enough force to send him flying back. He falls onto the floor and doesn’t get up, and she takes deep breaths of sweet air.

“How’s it going up there?” Natasha’s voice asks in her ear.

Bobbi shakes out her head and swallows a few times, trying to catch her breath. Her eyes are stinging, but she's okay. “Good. Good, I’m...good. My guys are all unconscious, just need to restrain them.”

“Roger. Meet us at the front door when you’re done.”

She uses cable ties to fasten together their hands and feet. By the time she’s done, her heart rate is back to normal, and she’s no longer seeing spots in her vision. She gets a rope from her belt, threads it through the metal encasing of an air conditioning unit, and attaches it to the carabiner on her side. Taking a final deep breath, she starts to lower herself down the side of the building, keeping her grip on the rope loose so that the slide down is quick and smooth.

Natasha and Clint are waiting for her by the door as she jogs up. Clint's sleeve has a bloody gash in it, like he was nicked in the arm, and Natasha's got a bloody nose, but other than that, they seem to be in good shape. Alive. Like her.

“Door's unlocked,” Natasha says, pushing the front door open. “Top floor, let's go.”

The first lit room they find on the top floor has four men inside, sitting around a desk. One of them is labeling what looks like pill bottles while another takes inventory. They all swivel to the doorway as the agents walk in, and one of them quickly reaches for the phone on the desk. 

Natasha shoots the receiver out of his hand. 

After that, they surrender immediately. As the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents tie them up, they insist that they know nothing, _nothing_ , they're just researchers, just pharmacists, just contractors; they have no idea who's in charge or what sort of work is done here.

“We're dead,” one of them says to the rest.

“If you give us information, maybe we can keep you safe,” Bobbi says in English.

He snorts and responds in English. “You don't know the people we work for.”

Bobbi smiles, putting some nastiness into it. “I thought _you_ didn't know the people you worked for.”

“We're past that fiction, Princess,” he responds with a sneer.

She's tempted to fasten his tie a little bit tighter, just enough to possibly cause permanent damage to his hand, but instead, she grits her teeth as she finishes restraining him.

\--

Once it’s done, they step back and eye the tied-up researchers.

“Nat,” Bobbi says. “Go check the other rooms, see if we’ve got any runners. Clint, you’re with me. We’ve got to find enough evidence to shut this down and send all these people away.”

Natasha nods and heads to the door. She moves quietly down the hallway towards the one other room with a light on. She opens the door and the scene she finds gives her such a visceral reaction that she freezes for a second.

There’s a boy strapped to a medical chair with a needle in his arm. He’s gagged to muffle the constant screaming, and his face is dark red and streaked with tears. Next to him, a man in a lab coat calmly mixes a paste in a jar, bobbing his head along to some sort of light rock music playing in the background. Like a goddamn dentist’s office. From a horror movie.

Forcing herself to move, Natasha raises her pistol and walks into the room. The researcher looks up and drops his tools, which clatter to the ground. She knows that she should calmly restrain him like they have the others, but another look at the boy’s anguished face fills her with a sudden white-hot flash of rage. Without thinking about it, she holsters her gun and attacks the researcher, kicking him against the wall and then whaling on him with her fists.

“I surrender, I surrender!” he shouts.

She pushes him against the wall and digs her elbow just far enough into his throat so that he’ll have trouble breathing. “ _Not good enough_ ,” she snarls in English, dropping her arm and slamming him against the wall again. “That’s a _child_! A fucking child!” As she continues to press with her elbow, she sees that his eyes are starting to lose focus, and she realizes she needs to stop before she kills him. Anyway, the boy on the table is still screaming—or trying to—and she needs to tend to him.

Natasha pulls out a few of the cable ties from her pouch and quickly restrains the researcher by his hands and feet, then moves to the chair. The boy cowers in front of her, which is fair enough—seeing her kick the shit out of someone, even his tormentor, probably isn’t what he needs right now. That’s on her.

“You’re going to be okay,” Natasha says to the kid in Hungarian. She pulls the needle out of his arm and unties the fabric covering his mouth, tries not to wince at the red marks left by the tight knot. This kid can’t be older than eight.

Fresh tears are starting to fall from the boy’s eyes as he looks at her pleadingly. “Untie me,” he says, responding in Hungarian.

She moves quickly, finding the fastenings of the straps and releasing them, then reaching out a hand to help him up. Once he sits up, she’s shocked to see that he has enormous white feathered wings coming out of his back. They were trapped under his body while he was strapped in, and must have been one of the factors causing him so much pain.

The back of his shirt is ripped and bloody. She wonders if the wings are new, created within the past few hours, or if he’s had them for a few days already.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Do they hurt?”

He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

“Good. What’s your name?” she asks. When he doesn’t answer, she adds, “I’m Natalia.” She checks her pockets, finds a package of gum, and pulls it out. “Do you want one?”

He shakes his head.

“We’re here to bring you home,” Natasha says. “Do you want me to call your parents?”

At that, he bursts out in tears. Acting on instinct, Natasha squats down and puts her arms on his shoulders, at which point his wings fold in on themselves and he buries his face in her neck. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re safe now.”

“They told me my parents were dead,” he says, voice muffled by her tac uniform.

Oh, shit. It’s probably not true—Bobbi didn’t say anything about dead adults—but she doesn’t want to make any promises she can’t guarantee. Swallowing, she ruffles his hair with one hand and pulls away so that she can look him in the eyes. “Let’s go find your friends,” she says, “and then we’ll make some phone calls. Do you know your phone number?”

He nods and takes her by the hand, leading her out into the hallway and to the pitch-black stairwell. Natasha pulls a miniature flashlight out of her pocket and turns it on. There’s just enough light to keep them from tumbling down the stairs, but their eyes will remain adjusted to darkness. “They keep us in the basement,” he says.

They start walking down the stairs, and one flight down, she sees that the stairwell door has one of Bobbi’s staves sticking out between the door and the frame, holding it open. She turns towards the kid. “What do they do on this floor?”

He shrugs, and she pushes the door open to check it out.

As they walk down the hallway, she can hear Bobbi and Clint talking in one of the rooms. The kid stops in his tracks and pulls on her hand, like he wants to get out of there.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Those are my friends. They’re nice.”

He squeezes her hand but doesn’t stop her, and they approach the door. She knocks to let them know she’s there and opens the door a crack. “Hi, guys,” she says in English.

She looks around. They’re in front of a desk with a computer and open drawers. Clint has a lit flashlight between his teeth and binder open in front of him, with a thick stack of used paper inside, while Bobbi sits next to him at the computer, eyes moving back and forth to read whatever she’s seeing on the screen.

Bobbi looks up at her and grins. “Jackpot,” she says. “This has everything we need to shut things down.”

“Excellent,” Natasha says. She steps into the room and brings the boy with her, then says, “So this is—” she turns to her new friend and asks him in Hungarian, “What’s your name, _kicsim_?”

“Yoska,” comes the reply, shy and quiet.

“This is Yoska,” she says, “and he’s going to help us rescue his friends.” She repeats the sentence in Hungarian afterwards.

“Hello,” Clint says with a wave and a smile.

Yoska clutches Natasha’s hand. He stares at Clint and Bobbi, but doesn’t say anything.

“I like the...” Bobbi starts in halted Hungarian, and then she pats both of her shoulders, and a hint of a smile appears on Yoska’s face. His wings are visible behind his back, though they’re not extended. Natasha wonders if they’ll go away once the hormone leaves his system, or if they’re permanent.

Clint closes the binder and puts it into a backpack, then holds the bag open for Bobbi, who pulls a USB flash drive out from the computer and drops it in. “Let’s go, then,” Clint says. He walks over to Yoska and extends his hand, pointing to himself and saying, “Clint.”

Yoska giggles and shakes his hand, and then he leads them down three flights of stairs to the basement.

“They keep it locked,” he says in Hungarian.

“Not a problem,” Natasha responds. She translates for Clint and Bobbi, and Clint reaches for his quiver, sliding it off his body. Holding out his flashlight, he leans over to examine the door handle handle. A few seconds later, he pulls an arrow out of his quiver, snaps off the end, and holds it next to the lock as some sort of white vapor—liquid nitrogen, probably—hisses out of the broken arrowhead. Then he drops the arrow, takes a step back, and kicks the door in.

The door hits the wall next to it with a slam, shattering the silence. Clint shines the flashlight inside the room, and they see a group of children and teenagers huddled together in sleep against the far wall. Some of them have woken up with the noise of the door being forced open, and they start to sit up and blink at the light.

For a few seconds, both groups just stare at each other, unmoving. After a few seconds, Bobbi says cheerfully, “Hi!”

The kids are mostly looking between the three of them and the door, as if judging whether they can make a run for it.

“We’re the police,” Natasha lies. A white lie, to match what will inevitably be the official story. “We’re here to return you to your families.”

There are some murmurs amongst the kids, and they start to stand up. “How did you find us?” comes a voice from the middle of the group, a girl with short brown hair.

“We followed the bad guys,” she answers, leaving it at that. “Does anyone here—”

She’s interrupted by a sharp voice barking in Hungarian. “Drop your weapons!” Natasha looks in horror to see a man standing by the door, holding a gun to the temple of a trembling child. “Drop them!” he repeats in English. “Lower your weapons slowly to the floor, or I kill him right now.”

The three of them slowly disarm themselves, then they stand back up, arms raised.

“Kick them here,” the man says.

Natasha goes to do so, when out of nowhere, Yoska attacks the man from behind, jumping on him and sinking his teeth into his arm. There’s a loud _crack_ as the gun goes off. She can’t do anything but look on in horror in the direction the gun is pointed, towards a teenage-looking girl with a long blond braid, and her mind fills in the picture that she knows she’s about to see: a red stain blossoming on the girl’s green T-shirt, a few seconds of shocked silence before she slumps to the ground.

Except it doesn’t happen. Plaster erupts from the wall behind the girl, who turns casually to inspect the damage.

She quickly turns back to the man, who looks shocked and is trying to throw Yoska off of his arm. Natasha takes advantage of the distraction and kicks the gun out of his hand. She’s not feeling especially charitable as she slams this guy’s head into the ground while tying him up. She drags him into the hallway, and when she comes back, Bobbi and Clint are on their knees in front of the girl who was in the bullet’s way, checking to see if she’s all right.

“She says it went through her,” Bobbi tells Natasha.

“The bullet went through you?” Natasha asks the girl in Hungarian.

“Everything goes through me,” the girl says. Natasha asks her some follow-up questions, and it turns out that for five or six hours after each treatment, she phases through all solid matter unless concentrating hard on it—which is why she’s able to hang on to her clothing—but they put some type of electric field around the room, tuned specifically to her power, so that she gets zapped every time she gets too close to the walls. “Like a dog,” the girl mutters bitterly.

Natasha lets out a sympathetic _tsk_ , shaking her head. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as it wears off.” She looks around the room, and speaks in English to Bobbi and Clint. “I think it’s time to bring in the press.”

“That’s my cue,” Bobbi says. She digs into her pocket and takes her phone out, then dials a number and puts the phone up to her ear, waiting for an answer.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but it is urgent,” she says in a surprisingly convincing Swiss accent. “I have something you will want to see, and it cannot wait until the morning.” She gives him their address, and adds, “Bring your camera,” before hanging up.

Natasha notices that Yoska is sneaking glances at Bobbi while she speaks on the phone, and she suddenly remembers her promise to let him call home. She doesn’t want to have all of the children call their parents—it’ll start a pandemonium, and they’ll be home by morning, anyway—but a promise is a promise. She catches his eye and gestures towards the hallway, indicating that he should follow her out.

They go up to the lobby, and she hands him her phone. He hesitates for a second. “What if they don’t answer?” _What if they’re dead_?

“Is there anyone else you could call?” Natasha asks.

He nods. “My sister.”

He dials, and after a few rings, someone picks up, at which point he starts speaking in rapid Hungarian, peppering his language with some Romani words Natasha doesn’t know but can figure out from context, telling her that he’s fine and that he’ll be home soon and asking if she’s _sure_ their parents are okay, if they’re _definitely_ asleep at home, if everyone is really there, safe and sound. He tells her about the nice redheaded policewoman who rescued him and let him use her phone— 

“You might want to tell her about the wings,” Natasha cuts in, and he covers the receiver and giggles.

“Nothing,” he says into the phone. Eventually, he runs out of things to say, and, with a promise to be home soon, he tells his sister goodbye, and they go back downstairs.

Tomi shows up about half an hour later. He stands in the doorway as he takes in the scene, the dirty, ragged, traumatized children, half of them covered in plaster powder. “ _Istenem_. What has happened here?” He catches sight of Bobbi in her tactical gear, staves on her back and pistol in her thigh holster, and gapes. “ _Barbara_?”

“Yeah,” Bobbi says in her normal voice. “Um, you know that lead you were following? Well...I’m not exactly who I said I was.”

Tomi looks at her in shock. “You’re—American?”

She lets out a breathless laugh. “Yeah, let’s start with that.”

They give him a basic rundown of the situation, without using the word S.H.I.E.L.D., of course, and he nods along.

“We’ll be in touch with you regarding the release of pertinent information,” Natasha says.

“Right.” Tomi takes a deep breath. “I know I should be angry... but that an American intelligence agency thinks I’m important enough to send spies after me is quite flattering,” he says. He looks at Bobbi. “You were a very convincing Swiss writer.”

“Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls,” Clint cracks.

Tomi looks at him, and after a beat, says, “You know, you look familiar.”

Clint’s eyes widen. “Really? We met yesterday, man.”

“You...served me my espresso?”

Natasha laughs.

“Now you’re just pulling my leg,” Clint says with a huff.

Tomi shrugs noncommittally.

“The labs are upstairs, if you want to take pictures,” Bobbi says to Tomi, changing the subject. “I’ll show you.” The two of them leave the room. Natasha imagines they’ve got quite the awkward walk ahead of them.

“Time to order a cleanup crew?” Clint asks, once they’re gone.

“I guess so.” Now that the hard part is over, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s specialists can return the kids to their families, set up appointments for detox treatments, and get in touch with the police. The story they tell will be the sanitized version, and Valentin will probably be thrown under the bus by his associates and take the fall for the entire operation. Politics are dirty, but that’s above Natasha’s pay grade.

The important thing is...

She looks out at the room and watches the children interact with each other as the fact of their rescue sinks in. Yoska and another boy around his size are horsing around, and he’s testing out his wings, moving his shoulder blades in exaggerated circles while his head is turned around to check out the effects. The wings go in circles, too, and then they get caught on each other for a second, and he and his friend burst out in laughter. Then he spreads them wide and flaps them, managing to get a few feet off the ground, until he looks up at the ceiling and panics, causing his wings to fold up in midair. He falls to the floor and rolls over, and his friend runs over to check on him, but he’s laughing again.

Natasha pulls out her phone and makes the call.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they all lived happily ever after. (What? It's a prequel.)

“That was fun,” Clint says.

Bobbi snorts. She’s sitting across from him in the back of the company jet on their way back, a cup of hot tea with honey in her hand. “Hawkeye, your idea of fun is not most people’s idea of fun.”

“Most people aren’t agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It was fun.” He nudges Natasha, next to him, with his elbow.

“It was fun,” Natasha agrees.

“Fine, it was,” Bobbi says.

“See, that wasn’t so hard.” Clint grins. “So, what are you guys up to next?”

“Well, Hartley has an open spot on her team,” Bobbi says, “and rumor has it I’m in the running.” She sets her tea down on the tray next to her and crosses her fingers on both hands. “Mack wants it, too, so I figure that inevitably one of us will hire a hitman to take out the other. If he calls either of you...”

“Take his money and disappear?” Clint guesses.

“Good boy.”

Clint laughs. “Nah, Mack’s a good guy. How about you, Nat? What have you got on the horizon?”

Natasha puts her feet up on the empty seat in front of her, next to Bobbi’s seat. “I’ve gotten a few missions from STRIKE lately. Rumlow’s an asshole, but he’s an asshole who gets good jobs. If you want, I’ll put in a good word for you, see if he’ll take you on, too.”

“You’ll put in a good word for _me_?” Clint repeats in mock offense. “How the tables have turned.”

“Shut up,” she says, laughing.

“It’s good to have friends in high places,” he says to Bobbi.

Bobbi laughs. “And to think, you knew her when.”

\--

Once they get back stateside, Clint takes a week off and goes to California to visit Laura. He turns on the TV and they watch as the story unfolds in Hungary, which is as close as he can get to telling her how the mission went without breaking regulation, and he tells her about his fears and about Bobbi’s advice. He’s not really expecting her to go along with it, and he’s shocked when she says it’s a good idea.

“This isn’t the future we were planning for,” he says. “We’ll be living a lie. You’ll have to tell your friends and family we broke up.”

Laura nods and takes his face in her hands. “It won’t be easy. But you’ll still get to save the world, and I’ll still get you.” She quirks a grin. “And the farm.”

“And the farm, of course. Let’s not forget what’s really important here.”

“Let’s not.” She leans in for a kiss, and they fall onto the couch.

He flies back on Sunday and is back at work Monday morning. As he walks down the hall, he passes by Bobbi, who makes eye contact and gives him a quick nod, the first time she’s acknowledged his presence at work in years. He nods back, feeling a little lighter, and keeps walking until he reaches an office marked **Nicholas J. Fury**. The door is open a crack; he peeks in and sees Fury sitting at his desk, flipping through a binder.

He clears his throat, causing Fury to look up. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Clint asks.

“Sure.” Fury waves his hand in a motion meant to indicate closing the door, which Clint does before sitting down. “What’s up, Barton?”

“I’m here to ask for a favor.”


End file.
